


Rules & Roses

by imagineaworlds



Category: Criminal Minds (US TV)
Genre: BDSM, Bisexual, Bondage, F/F, F/M, Lesbian, Mistress, Multi, Pansexual, Polyamory, Sir Kink, Slow Burn, mistress kink, non-binary
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-11
Updated: 2021-01-21
Packaged: 2021-03-16 05:21:36
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 18,596
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28701366
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imagineaworlds/pseuds/imagineaworlds
Summary: falling in love with two people at once felt like sitting in the middle of an ocean during a hurricane. there was nothing i could do but ride the waves. there was nothing i could do but let the ocean consume me. and i enjoyed it. i would always let a love like theirs consume me.-------------criminal minds (us tv show)aaron hotchner x non-binary!reader x emily prentisspolyamory triadthe reader uses "they/them" pronouns, but hotch and emily use "female play names" like "baby girl" and "princess", etc.
Relationships: Aaron Hotchner & Emily Prentiss, Aaron Hotchner/Emily Prentiss, Aaron Hotchner/Emily Prentiss/Reader, Aaron Hotchner/Reader, Aaron Hotchner/You, Emily Prentiss/Reader
Comments: 21
Kudos: 73





	1. you, me, and the whole, wide world

Meeting her and losing her seemed to come between a single snap of her fingers. One moment she was there, the next, she was gone, and I had no way of knowing where she went. When we first met, she made it clear to me that something like this could happen, and if that time were to ever come, I would never get any answers. I didn’t know if she was alive or dead. I didn’t know where she was. She had simply vanished without a trace. Not knowing the truth was the worst part, even though I thought I was prepared for not knowing. We had been sneaking around Europe together for about a year when she up and disappeared without a trace. She said she was coming back. The door closed behind her as she made her way to the market on Wednesday, as she did every week whenever she was home with me. Her job called for her to be away… a lot. There were weeks where I didn’t hear from her, and then, like magic, she would appear at my door, and she’d be home for a few days before disappearing again. Once, I asked why. I asked what her job was and why it required secrecy and constant travel, but she demanded that I drop it, and there was nothing I could do but accept that. But that Wednesday, when she left for the market, I expected that she would return. I waited for the door to open again. I waited to see her brown hair appear in the doorway, and her long stride would bring her over to me in the living room, and I could finally hold her in my arms again. But that never came. She never came.

Lauren Reynolds came and went as she pleased. Sometimes there were seconds to spare where she could turn over her shoulder to tell me, “I love you,” and then leave. Other times, she was out the door before I could press my lips to her. After a year of living with that behavior, I was used to it. I loved her, so there was nothing I could do to argue it. This was what I had signed up for. I knew this would be a reality when I dove head first into a relationship with Lauren. But not knowing where she was… it killed me. Even when she was gone for weeks on end, she would manage to get a letter or two to me to let me know that she was alright and that she loved me. Two months had passed, and there wasn’t a single word from her. My worst fears had been realized. She was gone. Whether it was of her own volition, or if someone stole her from me, I wasn’t sure. It didn’t matter, though, considering I would never get any answers, just as she warned me when we first started dating. “One day, I might leave and never come back, Y/N. You have to know that if that happens, it wasn’t because of any choice I made. I’ll do anything to be with you until my dying breath, I swear… I just… My job… I don’t know—” She seemed too hesitant to say it, so I pressed a kiss to her lips. Now that she was gone, though, I wished that I wouldn’t have kissed her. I wished that I would have let her struggle through her words so that I knew what was going on, so that I had some kind of idea as to what happened to her. Lauren said that she would always come back to me, but she didn’t this time. I didn’t understand why.

It ate at me for the longest time that I didn’t know what happened to her. It killed me that I couldn’t go searching for answers, because, even if I wanted to, I wasn’t sure where to start. I didn’t know what Lauren did, I didn’t know her friends, her family was long gone, and I had no connections to who she really was. When we were dating, that was fine. I liked the seclusion because it meant that I could have her all to myself while she was with me. We didn’t have to resort to talking about work or family drama when we got bored— well, if we got bored. Lauren was a very lively person. She didn’t like to waste a single moment of her life, so even though I was cut off from the rest of her life, that didn’t stop her from showing me the world. We went everywhere and did everything. That was our thing. But when she disappeared without a trace, it seemed damn near impossible to move on without any answers.

There was this one time, when I was staying in her favorite village in Bulgaria, that I swore I saw her. Her hair wasn’t brown and curly anymore, it was black and straight, but it looked like Lauren Reynolds. Maybe I was seeing things. It was possible that I was so desperate to see her again that I was looking for her in every corner of the world, and because I wanted to see her, I chose to see her, even though Lauren Reynolds was probably long gone. I never saw her after that. There was never another point throughout the next twelve years where I thought, “Wait, that girl looks like Lauren…” For twelve years, I tried to forget her. For twelve years, I tried to move on. But there was something about Lauren Reynolds that was so perfect, despite the fact that she kept so many secrets. At some point, I did forget about her… for a time. I met new people, fell in and out of love a couple of times, but I kept traveling the world because of her. Every time I arrived somewhere new, I wondered what Lauren would say or do. I imagined her smile and giddiness. I imagined that she would already know everything about where we were, and she would know where to take me, how to blend in with the locals, how to get out of the tourist rates, and how to have a blast. Her laugh always echoed in my ears. If I were stepping off a plane or parking a car, I would hear her laughing in my ear, followed by a passionate, “I love you more than anything.” Sometimes, when we had these trips to nowhere, Lauren would immediately just pull me into the hotel room, and we would spend all day wrestling in the sheets. Now, for the most part, I spent my days alone, and my bed was empty and cold. Like I said, there were plenty of times I fell in and out of love after Lauren, but none of it ever stuck. None of it ever meant anything. None of them were ever Lauren Reynolds.

Thirteen years after Lauren disappeared without a trace, I found myself in Washington D.C., taking up a job offer and the chance to tour America. My new job wasn’t anything special, don’t get me wrong. It was nothing to write home about, but it paid, and I obviously needed the money if I was going to visit all of the places Lauren always talked about. Boston… She loved Boston. I wasn’t sure why, but she never stopped promising me that she would take me to Boston. At first, I thought it was possibly because she was born there. But, nope. When I asked if that were the case, she laughed and said that she wasn’t from the States. Obviously, I was confused, because why else would she love the United States as much as she did unless she were from there? Perhaps she had family in Boston? Maybe that was how I could connect some dots about where the hell Lauren Reynolds went thirteen years ago. That was the plan, at least.

Some time in the future, the plan was to get a week or so off of work so that I could drive down to Boston and ask around about a Lauren Reynolds. The U.S. was huge, though. There weren’t small villages scattered around, and people hardly seemed to know each other. In Europe, Lauren and I only went to small villages or towns where everyone knew everything about each other. That was what I expected out of the U.S when I arrived because the small, secluded, safety vibe was always her thing. That was why D.C. caught me so off guard. The people in my building didn’t even know each other. My boss struggled to remember my name for the first month or so, even though we had weekly meetings with the Board to discuss upcoming projects and how the stockholders were getting antsy. News flash, they were always antsy. They had a lot of money invested in the company I worked for, so when an exchange of power came along, and they happened to hire an outsider, the stockholders weren’t too happy. So, I just had to prove myself. I had to make sure that they knew I was reliable and valuable, that I knew what I was doing, and that I was the best thing to ever happen to their company. I supposed it worked eventually because they eventually decided to leave me alone, giving me a chance to actually just do my work instead of worrying about what a group of men thought about my work performance.

Lauren used to say to me, “Y/N, this is a man’s world, but when it’s just you and me, we have the whole, wide world to just be us. Don’t listen to what everyone else says. It’s you and me. That’s all that matters.”

Though she was gone, I thought about that a lot— especially when co-workers would try to push me around. Lauren would’ve hated it if she thought that I would just lay down and let men trample all over me. There was something else she used to say that always made me smile, and that was, “Men are good for one thing, and one thing only. Fucking. Don’t let them tell you any different.” And she would always follow it up with a kiss and a whisper in my ear that said, “But I’m the only one who can fuck you.” And my knees would go weak.


	2. tripping over my own feet

With the slight promotion I earned in January came the perk of making my own schedule. Since people worked for me, I got to “sleep in” until about nine or ten in the morning— and by “sleep in”, I mean that it gave me a chance to roll out of bed and go for a run every morning with enough time to shower and still get breakfast. But I liked it. I liked that I wasn’t having to rush to work at five anymore. It was all at my own pace. My later schedule also meant that I could afford to go to a better park with a nicer trail to run on. At seven in the morning, it was a fairly popular place with everyone running around each other while trying to dodge the dogs and kids running around. The trail itself was longer, but it circled around a gorgeous garden, then led to a great view of the city so that I could see the Capitol building. I loved it, and it seemed that everyone else did, too. It was hard to run around the hikers and the families that were taking up the width of the path, yet it was always worth it.

Fridays were the busiest. Since the weekend was approaching, tourism normally spiked, and there were some people who were already off of work, or their bosses were being lenient with the hours. So, the already busy path was… full. It was ridiculous. Still, that didn’t deter me from finding a parking spot, lacing up my running shoes, filling up my water bottle at the fountain between the public bathrooms, pushing my earbuds into my ears, then heading onto the path.

Immediately, I almost ran into a little kid that was running straight across the path to catch the frisbee his dad threw a little too far. I stopped, rolled my eyes, then, when he was out of the way, I continued on. How were kids awake at 7AM? I hated summer. When I was a kid, I spent all day in bed when I wasn’t in school— which I thought was a timeless tradition. For the most part, I was sure most kids would prefer that to be the case, anyhow, which was probably why I was so shocked when I saw so many kids at that park every morning. His dad apologized with a wave as I ran by. I hardly acknowledged him. America was so different compared to the rest of the world. Americans liked to keep to themselves, however, there were some that were a little too nice, hence my hesitancy to wave back.

Near the end of the path, where there was a huge U-turn to keep the flow of traffic on the path moving, I found myself slowing down slightly to make sure I didn’t run into any of the tourists that were stopping to smell the roses in the garden. My eyes were up, trying to gauge if anyone was going to run into me. It seemed safe. The awkward part about this U-turn, however, was that everyone who had been ahead of me on my run was now turning around to run the opposite way. The backs of heads I recognized were now gaining faces to attach to them. And the eye contact… Don’t get me started. I practically had to keep my eyes up, but that meant that everyone running my way now had an instinctual urge to look at me, which meant that I had to look at them. It was horrible.

As I made my way around the U-turn, barely jumping out of the way before a grandma’s cane could stab my foot. When I looked up from my foot to the path, I saw someone who had just been behind me pass me, so now she was giving me a judging look as she started running in my direction to make her way back to the parking lot. Her hair was black, bangs cut to just barely touch her lashes, the length of it pulled back into a ponytail in the middle of the back of her head. Her brown eyes met my gaze for the briefest moment, but when we made that uncomfortable eye contact, she quickly looked away and sped up from a jog to a sprint. I looked down at the concrete. Making awkward eye contact with strangers was the worst… but staring at someone because they were gorgeous and you couldn’t pull your eyes away was even worse—

Wait.

“Lauren?” I questioned under my breath as I came to a sudden halt, nearly tripping on my own feet.

That woman— the one in the distance— she looked exactly like Lauren. Not like they could be sisters, but like they could be doppelgangers. I was so confused. But as I watched her continue her peaceful jog on the path, my gaze followed her while I tried to figure out if it was really her or if my mind was playing tricks on me. There were plenty of times when I thought I saw Lauren over the past thirteen years, but it never turned out to be her, but this time… I would have put money on it being Lauren.

And then someone crashed right into me.

I gasped and stumbled forward before I felt their hands grab my hips lightly in order to keep me steady. I pulled my headphones out so that I could apologize. As I caught my footing and turned around, I was met by a tall man with brown hair that was all sweaty and stuck to his forehead, a small, apologetic smile took over his face, but his hands didn’t move from my hips until he was sure that I wasn’t going to waver. I made an attempt to say sorry, but he beat me to it.

“I didn’t see that you had stopped. My apologies.”

“No worries,” I insisted while looking over my shoulder to see if I could spot that woman again. She had disappeared. As always, the ghost of Lauren Reynolds had vanished without a trace, and I was left to think that I was completely insane. Not only had I seen someone who was long long, but I had embarrassed myself by crashing into this man, and now I wasn’t even being polite by apologizing back because I was too preoccupied with looking over my shoulder. I sighed. “Sorry,” I said with a nervous chuckle. “I thought I saw someone—” I shook my head. “Never mind. Sorry.” I waved shortly to him before jumping back onto my toes so that I could keep running on the path. “Sorry…” I mumbled again. “Sorry…”

He laughed at me as I reached to put my headphone back in my ear. “It’s not your fault.”

I smiled. This was… weird. He seemed nice enough, but we had been standing there while pointlessly apologizing for too long. Neither of us were required to stick around, and I definitely didn’t want to now. Every time I “saw” Lauren, it took a toll on me. Having that hope build in my chest that I would get to see her again, to hold her in my arms, to kiss her lips, and to tell her “I love you, Lauren”, only to have it crushed entirely was… draining. I couldn’t keep doing it. This was my torture, and I knew that wasn’t how she had intended for it to happen, but that was the depressing truth of loving someone who would never come back. She tried warning me that she might disappear, and at the time, I was naive enough to think that it wouldn’t be a big deal, but now that I was living in a world where I didn’t have Lauren Reynolds around anymore, it was like I was stuck in place. I traveled, right. I moved on, I thought. But every fucking time this happened, I would find myself drawn back to the memories of how happy we were together. I would never be that happy again in my life. Lauren was the real deal, and there was nothing I could do to mend my broken heart. I thought time would do it naturally… but, nope. There I was, thirteen years later, and there was this six foot Nordic God standing in front of me, yet all of my attention was on that woman who reminded me of Lauren.

I didn’t see him or Lauren’s doppelganger again for the rest of my run. Honestly, that was a relief. The less I saw of her, the faster I could forget about her. As I thought about it, my running pace sped up until my feet were pounding on the pavement and my calves started to burn. I didn’t stop, though. It took extreme diligence to make sure I didn’t run into anyone, but it felt nice to go as fast as I could, to run off every thought of Lauren Reynolds. The ghosting soft touch of her lips felt as vivid as the day she first kissed me. We were standing in a garden similar to this one, the sun beating down on us, a cool breeze passing by, the sound of birds the only thing that could possibly disrupt us for miles. We were in Romania. Lauren knew someone that had a house out in the middle of nowhere, and they offered to rent it to us for a few weeks so that we could have some time alone. On our way out there, I begged Lauren to stop the car so that I could jump out and go see all of the roses out there. The field seemed endless. The flowers were already in full bloom. It was gorgeous. It was perfect. It was everything Lauren Reynolds was to me. And then she joined me in the fields, giggling at how fascinated I was with the sea of flowers. That was when she tugged at my hand, pulled me close so that our chests were touching, and for the longest moment, we stayed so close to each other that I could feel her breath on my nose. I wanted her to kiss me. I could feel myself shaking with anticipation.She was so close I could practically taste her lemon chapstick already. But neither of us moved. Finally, as I shuddered when the wind passed by, Lauren pressed her palms to my cheeks, and she made me lean into her kiss. My eyes fell shut as I gave in. My heart was skipping in my chest, butterflies swirling in my stomach until I thought I was going to pass out, and my knees weakened. If it weren’t for her hold on my face, I would have fallen over.

Lauren Reynolds.

She did that.

Even the memories alone of kissing her made me swoon. I could get lost in her chocolate brown eyes all day and no one would hear a single protest from me because that was how head over heels I was for her. I dealt with missing her for weeks on end and not knowing anything about her life simply because I couldn't imagine my life without her. I preferred having some of her than none of her. But, in the end, it wasn’t my choice. In the end, someone or something took her away from me, and there wasn’t a single thing I could do about it. Seeing women who looked like her, like I did on that trail that morning, was going to be the death of me. It didn’t matter how similar they looked to her, they were never Lauren, and they never would be. I was going to be alone forever because I would never be able to find anyone else like her. Lauren Reynolds was everything and more to me. She was perfection. She was the whole universe bundled into one human that brought so much joy to me. All I would have until my dying breath was the ghost of Lauren following me around and the memories of loving her.


	3. are you following me?

Paranoia was starting to kick in. After days of running that same path without seeing another trace of that woman who reminded me of Lauren, I was genuinely starting to worry about just how fucking insane I was. I mean, think about it this way: I dedicated six years of my life to loving Lauren Reynolds so passionately that nothing else in the world mattered. As long as I had her, I was content. Then, one day, without warning, she was gone, and I was left to pick up the pieces. After those six years loving someone to the point that my life became theirs, it was hard to move on. Truthfully, I don’t think I ever did. There I was, thirteen years later, and my whole life was still about Lauren. For all I knew, she disappeared of her own free will. She woke up on that Wednesday morning, decided that she had enough of me, so she made it seem like she was going to the market, but she was really getting as far away from me as possible. Honestly, I wouldn’t have been surprised. I mean, I thought she loved me… but Lauren liked to keep moving, and she didn’t like to get close with anyone— hence why I hardly knew anything about her— so it was possible that she just got bored of me. If that were the case, then I was definitely insane for still being head over heels in love with her.

Not knowing what happened with her, or with us, made it impossible for me to gauge if it was okay for me to actually still be strung on her or not. The good news was, however, that I could run it out every morning at the park. Since it was slowly getting colder, the tourists were spending more of their time in the city where there was artificial heating. As for the usual faces I saw on the path, they were still there. The older couples that liked to walk the path on the warm, sunny days so that they could stare at all of the different flowers in the huge garden all day were already long gone, probably cooped up in their homes to stay warm with each other. I envied that life. It was the life I wanted with— Stop. The point of running was to just focus on the burn in my lungs and legs. Playing my music as loud as I could in my ear was also to help deter any wandering thoughts. If anything, I could just focus on the lyrics and pretend that I was elsewhere in the world with her— No.

Thirteen fucking years and I still couldn’t shake Lauren Reynolds.

As I reached the top of the U-turn, I decided to sit down on the bench there for once. Usually, it was taken up by one of the older couples or a lazy tourist; but, since they were all gone— and no one else was going to dare to sit on the cold metal— I got to stretch out for a moment as I caught my breath and tried to end this tug-of-war in my mind. People continued to pass. As they made their way around the U-turn, they each sent me a glance, all for different reasons. Some were confused, others were curious, and others had just accidentally looked over at me. There was confusion because it was way too cold to just be sitting on a metal bench in the park, and curiosity because they wanted to make sure I was alright. With every glance that came, however, I tried to see if I could spot that woman who looked like Lauren. I really wanted to see her again. Not because I wanted to talk to her or something, but because I just needed that reassurance that it wasn’t her. I needed to move on. Despite the fact that I hadn’t seen her again since that first glance, I was holding out hope that at some point I would get to prove to myself that I wasn’t cray.

“How are you not freezing?” his muffled voice passed through the music playing in my headphones just enough to catch my attention.

I looked up at him. It was the man from the other day, the one who bumped into me— the six foot Nordic God that I had ignored. I gulped. “I’m used to it.”

“Ah. So, you can say more than ‘sorry’.” He laughed. My eyes raked down his figure, taking in every detail of him. Since it was so cold out, his hair wasn’t all sweaty and sticking to his forehead this time around. His brown eyes were just as dark and endless this time as they were the first time, though, and I felt myself getting lost for a second before I caught myself on the detail of how his nose flared to stop himself from smiling when he saw me staring. “I’m Aaron,” he said when he realized that I didn’t know how to respond.

I smiled up at him. “Nice to meet you.”

“What’s your name?”

I stayed silent, my headphones still in my ears. I thought that it was common knowledge that you weren’t supposed to bother someone when they had headphones in. Then again, Aaron looked older, so it was possible that it was a generation rule, not a societal one. I stood from the cold bench to show that I wasn’t going to answer him. His eyes followed mine. As I jumped on my toes to try and warm myself up, my gaze continued to search his body. He was wearing a tight grey Under Armor shirt that showed off his loose abs that he was working on, and his biceps… Again, a six foot Nordic God. As for his pants, he was wearing knee-length black sports shorts over black tights to keep his legs warm. My eyes snapped back up to meet his face when I heard him chuckle.

“You’re shy,” he said to me.

“Not really.”

“So, then, what’s your name?”

This guy wasn’t going to give up— but, again, Americans were normally people that kept to themselves. If they didn’t, it was a huge red flag. The fact that this guy bumped into me the other day, and now he was trying to use that brief interaction as an excuse to talk to me again was unnerving. Stranger danger, right? That was an American concept, for the most part, but I supposed it was a valid thing to be concerned about. At this point, I had learned that they were onto something with their “stranger danger” concept. Despite the fact that this man was very attractive, looks could be deceiving. I wasn’t going to give him my name or any other attention, really. The less the better. I shouldn’t have stopped on that bench. I shouldn’t have stopped on the path the other day when he bumped into me, and I shouldn’t have stopped on the bench this time. I needed to learn to just keep moving. Just because I had all the time in the world to do what I want in the mornings now, that didn’t mean I should lolligag.

“I should go,” I said.

This time, he didn’t stop me with any kind of protest or hold on my hips. I wasn’t sure why, but that one detail from that morning stuck out the most— well, besides the fact that I thought I saw Lauren. He had knocked into me because of my sudden halt, and in order to save me from falling flat on my face, he caught my hips and held me until he was sure that I was okay. Even then, I had to pull from his touch. With all of the caution I had been proceeding with, it was irking me that I couldn’t forget how he held me. Maybe it was just the fact that he was attractive. I was easily blinded by love and sexuality— use Lauren Reynolds as the prime example— so, I couldn’t trust even myself when it came to attractive strangers like the six foot Nordic God who was following me around.

When I arrived at my car after my run, I sat down in the driver’s seat, the door still open so that I could knock the dirt off my running shoes and change into something more comfortable. As the sun was coming up for the rest of the morning, it started to warm up, but only slightly, I missed being warm all the time. Even with the constant traveling Lauren and I did, we managed to catch everywhere when it was warm. We never ran into snow unless it was on purpose. Like, this one time, Lauren took me to Poland so that we could stay in a cabin where the snow could trap us in, giving us all the time in the world to just be together and not be interrupted by anything. I hated the snow without her. I hated the cold without her. She used to keep me warm, no matter what. Now, I had no one to keep me warm, which made the cold— especially the D.C. cold— unbearable.

“I didn’t mean to scare you off earlier,” he said.

I rolled my eyes before looking up at him. “Are you following me? Do I need to call the cops?”

He laughed. “No. I just wanted to apologize. I’ll leave you alone—”

“Good. ‘Cause I will call the police—” My threat fell short when he dug into his pocket, pulling out a black wallet, then flipped it open so that I could see the inside. My jaw dropped. “Oh.”

“Yeah.”

I scanned every line of the I.D. laminated next to the bright gold FBI badge. “So, your name really is Aaron.” That was a relief, I supposed.

He laughed again. “Yeah.” He pocketed his badge. “I really didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable. I was just on a run the other day with my friend, and we were racing, so I was trying to keep up after she passed you; but I wasn’t looking where I was going, so I ran into you.”

“Did she win?”

“What?”

“Your friend. Did she win your race because of me?”

He bit the inside of his cheek to keep himself from widening his smile. “Yeah, she did. She would have won anyways. She’s fast.”

“You’ll have to challenge her to a rematch, that way I can bump into her next time so that you can win.”

I shivered suddenly. I tried to pass it off like I was cold, but, in reality, it was because I had just realized that I was flirting with him, even though I promised myself I wouldn’t get involved with a stranger. It was just that he pulled out that badge, and it suddenly gave me a sense of security with him— even though it could have been a fake badge, or the fact that he was still a stranger with a badge. I shouldn’t have been warming up to him as quickly as I was. I knew it was wrong. I knew that it was dangerous. Yes, neither of us could stop smiling. After not smiling for so long, I thought I forgot how to laugh. Then he came along, and it seemed easy to smile and laugh. It was natural. Unlike the other day, this wasn’t forced or awkward. We were just two people who happened to keep running into each other on the path, and because of that, we felt the need to create polite conversation. Still, it was wrong— It didn’t have to be wrong. No. It was. A badge didn’t mean he wasn’t still a stranger to me.

Aaron seemed to notice the truth behind my shiver, though, so he backed down. “I guess I’ll be seeing you around, then.”

“Yeah.”

“Okay…” He turned on his heels to make his way to his car.

“Y/N,” I said urgently.

He stopped. “What?” he asked while turning back around.

I swallowed hard. “My name’s Y/N. I figure, if you’re in the FBI, you’d find out sooner than later.”

“I wasn’t going to—”

“It’s okay.”

Aaron bit his lip nervously. “It’s nice to meet you, Y/N.”

“It’s nice to meet you, too, Aaron. See you tomorrow.”


	4. you're late

“You’re late,” I said to him while grinning. He shook his head, trying to stop himself from laughing so that he could focus on running up to me.

Aaron Christopher Hotchner was his name. Though I had learned a lot about him since we officially started talking on that cold Tuesday morning, I still thought of him as that six foot Nordic God. He hated that nickname, though. No matter how many times I used it, he never gave in, but I liked teasing him with it. Only two weeks had passed since we first started talking, and yet it seemed like we knew each other a lifetime. More than that, actually. My worries of talking to a stranger faded quickly the more we passed each other on the trail, then would chat as we walked to our cars. It was a nice, unspoken ritual we had. But it always started like this. No matter if it was warm or cold, sunny or cloudy, busy or quiet, we met at that park bench at the top of the U-turn. Usually, we ran beside each other, or he would be waiting up for me. This time, I was waiting on him. That wasn’t usual.

“How am I late?” he asked.

I looked at my watch. “It’s 7:17.”

“So?”

“You never reach the bench later than 7:15.”

Aaron smiled and put his hands on his hips to help him catch his breath. “Who’s stalking who now?”

“I never said you stalked me. Those are your own words.”

“Ha. Ha.” He panted for another second. “My son woke up late, so I got here late.”

I froze. During our little conversations here and there, he had never once mentioned anything about having a family. He didn’t wear a wedding ring, he seemed more than happy to flirt with me, and he never, ever said anything about having a son. This whole time, I thought he was an available man. I would have never flirted with him if I knew that he was taken, that he had other promises and responsibilities besides meeting me, practically a stranger, in the park every morning. Of course someone like him would have been snatched up by someone else. Of course the one person I saw myself potentially getting involved with since moving to D.C. was the one person I couldn’t have. My fucking luck, right? I was so stupid. How did I not see it before? Why did I get involved in all of this in the first place? I promised myself I wouldn’t talk to a stranger, and I broke that promise for him. I promised that I wouldn’t let my desperate urge for sex and love blind my ability to read social queues and dictate what was good and bad for me— and I fucking broke that promise. I saw him— I felt his hands on my hips— and everything I had learned from past experiences flew out the window. For a moment, for a blissful, wonderful moment, I forgot about Lauren because I had all of my focus on the Nordic God. A Nordic God that was taken. How fucking ridiculous.

Aaron sat down next to me. I scooted away, and he immediately noticed. A couple of days ago, I asked him what his job was at the FBI, and he told me that he studied the behavior of serial killers in order to find them. When he cracked a joke that his ability to “profile” serial killers was a curse that affected every aspect of his life, I asked him if he could profile me. Profiling was putting together all of the behaviors he spotted in someone in order to tell what kind of person they were, are, and could potentially be. Aaron laughed. He said that he had already profiled me the day we met. “Your eyes were on my friend the entire time,” he said. “Her name’s Emily, by the way.” So, that had confirmed that it wasn’t Lauren I saw. Though I was somewhat relieved, I was also disappointed, and Aaron noticed. He asked me why I was staring at her, and I simply dodged a real answer by telling him that I thought she was someone else. His profiling skills seemed to tell him I was lying. Despite the fact that he knew I wasn’t telling the truth, he didn’t pry. He never did. When I moved away from him on the bench, however, and he noticed, that was the first time I ever heard him get serious with me.

“What is it?” he asked me quietly and sincerely. I shook my head. “Y/N, it’s not what you think—”

“Why…” I hesitated for a beat. “Why would you keep flirting with me if—”

“My wife died years ago, Y/N. That’s what I’m trying to tell you.”

If I wasn’t embarrassed before, I was as red as a fucking tomato, and this time for all the wrong reasons. Originally, I had simply assumed that him having a son meant that he was still with someone. My first mistake. Then, I thought that it all meant that he didn’t like me, that he had been stringing me around for no reason, that maybe I was seeing between the lines. My second mistake. Now, I was embarrassed because I had made a complete fool of myself by tensing up at the thought of him having a kid— something I really didn’t mind, actually— and then I admitted that I thought he was flirting, all while practically pushing him away. I fucked this all up. Why was it that he made me trip over my tongue like this? I mean, he was always in my head since that first day we met and I felt his hands on my hips; and I found myself wanting to spend more time with him and impressing him. All of that had just been flushed down the drain. Any chance I had to keep being this happy and distracted had just disappeared because I had been stupid.

“I’m sorry.” I did a lot of compulsive apologizing around him. Because he made me trip over my own tongue, I always happened to say the wrong thing, so I constantly needed to apologize, which I could tell he found adorable, but I found it to be humiliating. “I didn’t mean to force that out of you.”

“It’s okay. It’s been so long, and I’ve had to tell so many people; I’m neutral about it these days.”

“I’m still sorry.”

“If you say sorry one more time, I’m going to start feeling bad.”

“Sorr—” I caught myself before laughing. “That’s going to be a bad habit to break.”

“All habits are hard to break.” He shrugged, leaned back, and looked forward to make the feeling between us casual again. “New rule, no more apologizing.”

Part of getting to know each other was making rules in order to make ourselves comfortable. I didn’t pry about his work, he didn’t ask me any more about his friend Emily. I didn’t stare below his belt (a personal rule I made for myself that I never disclosed to him), and he didn’t stare too long at my breasts when I would wear a low cut or tight shirt (a rule he made for himself that went unsaid). The rules would come up occasionally, but only when we were sitting on that park bench surrounded by roses. The parking lot, however, was fair game. Because that was the last time we would get to see each other until the next day, which was never guaranteed since he traveled so much— just like Lauren always did— we both got to break our staring rules until we would get into our separate cars. This new rule about apologizing didn’t seem like just a roses rule, though. If I had to guess, Aaron was going to keep an eye on me to make sure I wouldn’t break this new rule.

I nodded. “Okay, fine. But, no more being late,” I said. He also nodded. “And, I need a 6AM warning every time you won’t be here.”

Aaron looked at me. “How am I supposed to do that?”

“Phone,” I demanded while holding out my hand. Aaron urgently dug into his pocket, racing to grab his phone before I could change my mind about giving him my number. He was too chicken shit to ask for it, so I didn’t mind taking that first step for him. Afterall, it was the most I could do since I totally messed up by getting uptight about his son. Speaking of which, when I turned Aaron’s phone on, I saw a picture of him holding his son, both of them smiling ear to ear after what looked like a victory after one of his son’s soccer games. I felt myself melting. “He’s adorable.” He had blonde hair, which wasn’t like his dad at all, but the brown eyes, lips, and nose were all a mirror image of Aaron.

“His name’s Jack.”

“How old is he?”

“Nine.”

I smiled at him before looking back down to unlock his phone and put my information into the Contacts app. When I was done, I turned it off and handed it back to him. “There. Now you can text me at 6AM every time you know you’re not going to be here.”

“And what about… other than 6AM?” He was biting his lip again. I always knew that he was flirting with me when he would bite his lip like that. He was the professional profiler, yet he couldn’t have been more obvious. One would think that he knew how to hide his tells better than that, but he really seemed to suck at it. “Can I call you tonight, maybe?”

“For what?”

He hadn’t anticipated that I would nudge him back with a question. “I—” He didn’t know what to say. I giggled. “Is it too late to take my rule back so that I can say sorry for being too forward?”

“Yeah. It is. Sometimes it’s okay to be forward.” I stood from the bench, giving him the idea that it was time to go. He stood, too, taking my lead because he seemed like a lost puppy that needed to be told what to do. “I get off work at seven. You can call me for whatever it is you have on your mind any time after that.” I jumped on my toes to warm myself up, also testing to see just how long he could keep his eyes on mine and not one any other part of me that was a little more… distracting. “I’ll race you to the parking lot.”

“What happens if you win?”

“Who said there needs to be prizes?”

“The new rule I just made,” he said like it was a tease.

I squinted at him. “You can’t just make rules up for your benefit, Aaron.”

“Well, if you win, Y/N, I’ll stop making up random rules.”

“And if you win?”

I saw his answer coming from a mile away, but I still felt myself smiling when he said, “I take you out for dinner after our call tonight.”

“Deal.”

Aaron wasn’t prepared at all yet, but that didn’t stop me from beginning my dash down the path. Though I was inevitably going to let him win, I still had to put up somewhat of a fight to make his win believable. Aaron seemed to notice immediately. Before I could make it very far, he was already speeding past me, intent on winning so that he could take me to dinner. Dummy. I wasn’t trying very hard to win. He didn’t seem to notice, though,even as we reached the parking lot where he claimed his victory. He slowed to a stop. As I caught up, he turned around and smiled.

“You’re late,” he teased me.

I rolled my eyes. “Pick me up at eight.” I immediately started making my way towards my car, which gave Aaron the chance to break his rule so that he could stare at me for a little longer than he was supposed to. “And don’t be late!” I called back to him.


	5. roses for you

Just as promised, Aaron called me around seven. Since he had my number but I didn’t have his, I was having to watch for unknown numbers, which meant that I was answering every spam call imaginable until I finally heard his voice. He always stood out to me. His voice alone was so unique that it always caught my attention. The jitters in the pit of my stomach that had been brewing all day finally exploded when I heard that first, “Hello?” from him. I found myself smiling against the phone. He sounded just as nervous as I was, but that helped calm me down tremendously. At least we were both nervous. At least I wasn’t being completely foolish. The weirdest part of all of this was that I hadn’t been this nervous about a simple phone call since Lauren. In fact, I didn’t feel this way about anyone else since Lauren. Everyone I dated or fucked didn’t make me anxious like this. There weren’t butterflies in my stomach, my knees weren’t bouncing, and my mouth wasn’t dry. But with Aaron… All of that hit me like a train. It was just a phone call, and yet I already felt like I was going to explode. That was probably so pathetic. I was such a mess. But, then again, it seemed that he was, too.

“Hey,” I answered shyly.

I could practically hear him smiling on the other end. “How was work?”

“Long.”

He hesitated.

“How about you?” I asked.

“Hard.”

I hesitated.

He cleared his throat. “So… dinner…” He sounded like he was thinking. “I know a cute, little cafe—”

“Okay.”

I cringed at how eager I seemed. I was coming off too strong, which could possibly scare him away, and I hated that about myself. I didn’t want to scare him off. I mean, I had originally been horrible to him when he first approached me because my attention was on his friend Emily, and then I practically threatened him— an FBI agent— that I would go to the police if he wouldn’t stop following me. None of that scared him off, though. And that was the worst I could possibly get. If he was willing to put up with that just to talk to me in the first place, then there was a chance that he wouldn’t run away from me for being nervous and stupid. Right?

Aaron chuckled lightly. Well, at least he didn’t hang up on me, that was a relief. He asked me to send him my address so that he could pick me up at eight, like we initially promised would happen during our run that morning. I wondered if he knew that I let him win. He must have. I was hardly jogging once he passed me and had all of his focus on just reaching the parking lot rather than on me following him. I wondered if it would come up during dinner. He was a profiler, so he happened to know everything about myself before I even knew it, which only increased his chances of seeing right through me. Lauren was the same. If I were being honest, she knew how to profile, too. I would never have to say anything to her if I was feeling off, or if I didn’t know what to say, or if I needed her so bad all I could do was whine and grind against her thigh. She always knew my truth. Maybe I had a type— which would be unfortunate, considering I didn’t know how to profile, so it was impossible for me to get a read on them and impossible to hide any secrets. That was why Lauren knew everything about me and I knew nothing about her. I hoped that wouldn’t happen with me and Aaron. Maybe I was being a little optimistic, but I could already see us going on more than one date. Okay. No. Calm down. I was jumping the gun on this.

When he showed up at my place, I waited for him to ring the doorbell, even though I was waiting nearby because my anticipation was overwhelming. It felt like being in high school all over again. I had been on a thousand dates with all kinds of people, and yet… this one… this date with a six foot Nordic God had me ready to fall head over heels again. I waited an appropriate amount of time before opening the door. Not wanting to show my enthusiasm, I had to make it seem like his arrival had caught me off guard while I was busy doing anything but waiting around for him.

He looked up at me when I opened the door. Seeing him in something besides his workout clothes was… fuck. I wasn’t speechless often. His dark brown— nearly black— suit matched his chocolate colored eyes perfectly. Without a tie in the way, I could see how the buttons lining his chest were straining because his shirt was so tight that with even one sudden movement, the whole shirt would fall apart. I was used to seeing him in tight clothing. Every morning when we met up at the park, he was wearing tight sports shirts that allowed me to see the outlines of his loose abs. But this… I couldn’t see the outlines through this shirt, but I could see just how fit he was in every other aspect.

“I wasn’t late this time,” he said while revealing the bouquet of roses he had been hiding behind his back. I smiled. “You look…” He hesitated. While I had been staring at him, he had been returning the favor, but he had the bravery to try and say something. “Sorry—”

“No apologizing, remember?”

He snickered. “Right.”

I reached out to accept the flowers. “I’ll put these in some water real quick.” He handed them to me. “Thanks.”

When I returned from putting the roses in a vase with water to help keep them fresh, I stepped out into the night air before closing the door behind me and locking it. Aaron waited patiently. Then, when I was ready, I turned to face him with a smile. Suddenly, he held his hand out for me, which took me aback, giving me a moment to consider if I was really ready for that or not; though, I ultimately decided that I wanted to hold his hand. I was excited to hold his hand. So, I clasped my hand around his. We both squeezed simultaneously. Before we took another step, I sucked in a brave breath.

“You alright?” he asked me quietly, leaning in to nudge my side. I nodded. “You ready?” I nodded again, this time a smile slowly creeping onto my face. “Okay.” And then we took the first step out together.

* * *

By the time we were leaving the cafe, they were already closing up for the night, practically kicking us out the door as they did so. We hadn’t meant to be an inconvenience, but time got away from us. Hours passed. Neither of us seemed to know that it had gotten so late because we were so lost in the conversation we were having while staring into each other’s eyes. Awkward topics like his wife, his son, my past relationships, and the reason why I was staring at his friend Emily didn’t seem to bother us. It had been years since his wife died, so it was easier for him to talk about it now than it was when it first happened. As for his son, he sounded like a total bundle of joy and energy that loved school, art, and soccer. I had no doubt in my mind that he knew he had the best dad in the world. Then, when Emily came up, I had to explain everything about Lauren and how I thought that they were the same person.

Aaron smiled at me until his teeth were showing. “She was special, wasn’t she?”

I nodded. Most people would have been uneasy about talking to strangers about past relationships— but we didn’t feel like strangers anymore. Everyone else, however, would have been uncomfortable with talking about past relationships while on a date. There were rules when it came to dating, and one of the big no-no’s was past relationships. Yet, it came naturally for us. I wasn’t turned off by him talking about his wife, Haley, and he wasn’t turned off by me talking about my ex-girlfriend, Lauren. I think what mostly mattered to us was that we were there together, we were having a good time getting to know each other, and I wasn’t getting one-night-stand vibes from him. My biggest fear before that first step outside of my place was that he would take me to that little cafe, talk with me for a bit to get me to warm up to him, and then he’d either invite me over to his place— however, with a son at home, that seemed unlikely— or he would’ve taken me home, then asked if he could come in for a bit. One thing would lead to another, and… Well… The rest would be history. But I didn’t want that to happen. There had been so many others in my past who had mistreated me like that— hell, I even did it from time to time, too. When it came to Aaron, though, I liked thinking that this could go somewhere more than that. I liked knowing that we were sharing all of our secrets and there wasn’t a single moment where I regretted it or felt uncomfortable. He made me feel… light. He made me feel like I could give all of myself to him without a second thought. I liked that feeling. The only other person I had ever met who made me feel like this was Lauren. I was okay with Lauren and Aaron being my everythings. I was getting ahead of myself again.

When we were kicked to the curb after closing, though, Aaron and I seemed at a loss for what to do next. He didn’t take me back to his place. He didn’t ask if I wanted to go back to my place. We just stayed there as I watched him kick the loose pebbles on the ground while his parents were buried in his pockets, and I fiddled with my thumbs behind my back. This was the most awkward we had been all night. The unconventional parts hadn’t gotten to us like this weird goodbye period was. Maybe he really thought that this would just be a one-night-stand, but since I wasn’t giving off that vibe, he didn’t know what to do.

“I had fun tonight,” I finally let out. He nodded an agreement. “Do you have to get back to your son tonight?”

“I probably should.”

Silence hung in the air for another minute. Some part of me wanted him to kiss me or to at least look at me. But… neither of us could make eye contact. It was like that first day we met where I couldn’t look at him because I was preoccupied. Now, however, there were no distractions between us. Just awkwardness. Maybe he wanted to kiss me, too, but he was afraid of being too forward. I wouldn’t have been offended if he tried. He gave me pure gentleman vibes between opening his car door for me on the way to the cafe, to pulling my chair out for me when we sat at the table, to making sure that no one looked at me the wrong way, to paying for everything on our date. Society norms were changing. The man wasn’t required to do any of that anymore— and I certainly didn’t meet many people who went out of their way to do that on a first date; but that was why Aaron Hotchner, the six foot Nordic God, stood out compared to everyone else. He went above and beyond. He did everything that was special. He did things that I didn’t expect of him, and I really, really liked that about him. So, him not kissing me or jumping my bones the first chance he got kind of made sense. He didn’t want to be ungentleman-like by doing something he wasn’t sure if I was ready for. But, he was a profiler. He should have known that he could kiss me. I wouldn’t mind.

“You should know something,” he said. I cocked a worried brow at him. “My job… Well, you know that it requires me to travel a lot.” I nodded. “So, it’s never guaranteed when I’m in town… But… I’d really like to do this again.”

I smiled at him. “Me, too.”

“I guess we’ll just have to play it by ear.”

“Yeah.”

He looked up and down the street to avoid making eye contact with me. “I guess I’ll see you in the morning.”

“Yeah.” I looked down, too.

Suddenly, he caught my attention with, “Hey—” When I looked up at him, Aaron’s thumb and index finger immediately pinched my chin, keeping my head steady so that he could kiss me quickly and not miss. He pulled away just as fast as he had first pressed his lips to mine. I hardly felt him at all. I pouted slightly. “Sorry—”

“No apologies—”

I tangled my fingers in his hair resting on the back of his neck and immediately kissed him back, this time refusing to let him pull away from me. I didn’t want him to be scared. I didn’t want him to think that I didn’t want him to kiss me. The butterflies in my stomach had returned. The eagerness in our presses and kisses were plain, which encouraged Aaron to move his hand from my face to my hip. Just like that first day we met where he caught me by the hip and held on a little too long, he dug his fingers into my hip, pulling me close to him until our chests were pressed together and he was towering over me slightly. Suddenly, I understood why his touch on my hips that first morning confused me. The butterflies suddenly made sense. At the time, I was too wrapped up in trying to see if Emily was Lauren that I couldn’t put the pieces together, but now that all of my attention was on Aaron, I knew.


	6. lauren

Tossing and turning all night, I couldn’t seem to stop thinking about Aaron and the kiss we shared. It was cliche to refer to it as electrical and perfect… but the longer I laid in bed, staring up at the ceiling, the harder it became to think of literally any other way to describe it. I forgot that people kissed like that. I forgot that there could be a passion that was stronger than sexual anticipation. That kiss was a reminder that there were people out there who were just as desperate to find someone to love, just like I was. Aaron kissed me back with even more passion than I gave in. His arms constricted around me. His fingers dug into me. His breath was hot on my nose as he breathed between kisses. His lips were so soft and relaxed. When our chests were pressed together and he was leaning over me, I could feel his heart beating in his chest. Every time mine skipped a beat, so did his. And then there was the way he smiled at me afterwards… When we realized what had happened, we stayed close, holding each other, staring at each other, and then we started laughing simultaneously. Since it happened so fast and fervently, we were only starting to realize what we did after the fact.

He tucked my hair behind my ear so that he could see my entire face. “I lied. I’m not sorry.”

I laughed. “Me, neither.”

We ended the night by getting back into his car, driving to my place, and he walked me up to my door. There was a moment when I thought that he would ask to come in. I wondered if I was wrong. Did he just want to get into my pants? It was a consideration I had all the way up to the door and as I was unlocking it, until I turned to see that he wasn’t trying to make another move on me. I searched his eyes to see if he was hiding it so that I would make the first move. Nothing. It was going to be really hard going out with a profiler. But… I was okay with that.

“I’ll see you bright and early in the morning, then,” I said.

Aaron nodded. “Bright and early.”

I fiddled with my keys. “Goodnight.”

He leaned up on his toes so that he was face to face with me since he was on a lower step than I was, and he kissed me again, this time a medium passion between his first, unsure kiss and our last, desperate make out. He slowly parted from me, his lips sticking to mine because of the lipstick until he was back on his heels. “Goodnight.” He smiled at me again.

And then I tossed and turned all night. I thought about kissing him again. At points, I regretted not inviting him inside, but I liked that we didn’t need to race to the bed for no reason. Most people fucked me, then left in the morning. Not Aaron Hotchner, though. To be fair, I wasn’t sure if I was the first person he had gone out with since his wife, Haley, or not. I never asked. That seemed like the one line I shouldn’t cross, so I didn’t. At least, not yet. I would eventually if it came up naturally. If that were the case, however, I wasn’t surprised that his kisses were light and hesitant, and he wasn’t immediately trying to get into my pants. If I was the first person he had asked out since Haley, he probably didn’t want to rush things. When Lauren left, it took me a long time to finally go out with someone again, and it took me even longer to fuck someone else. In some weird way, dating and fucking after her almost felt like cheating on her. Men and women would hover over me, and yet, sometimes, all I could see was her. Now that Aaron had come around, I hadn’t even heard her voice echoing at the back of my mind. There was a chance that wasn’t the case with Haley’s voice in his head, though. I was willing to wait. I was actually happy to wait because that made this… whatever this was… more special.

When the sun finally started to rise, I rolled out of bed so that I could get ready and head to the park in order to be on time to see him again. I was exhausted. Despite my excitement to meet up with him, I was regretting not falling asleep, and I was sure that my body was going to be angry with me after running on no rest. Great. I just had to push all of that to the back of my mind in order to focus on driving to the park, finding a spot for my car, then heading to the trail head. He was already there. Stretching his leg by bending it behind him and holding his ankle, wobbling as he tried to maintain his balance, I snuck up on him when he was least expecting it.

“How did you sleep?” I whispered into his ear.

He dropped his leg and stumbled forward. As he caught his balance and realized that it was just me, he laughed. “I didn’t really sleep,” he admitted, still trying to bite back a smile. He switched which leg he was stretching. “How about you?”

I shook my head. “I couldn’t sleep.”

“How come?”

I squinted because he knew exactly why. I didn’t ask him why he didn’t sleep because I knew why— and as a profiler, he should have known immediately why I didn’t get a wink of sleep. “You ready to get your ass beat?”

“Oh, is this a rematch from yesterday?”

“Obviously.”

“What are the stakes?” he asked while stretching his arms now, his biceps flexing in his tight blue shirt.

I swallowed hard. “I win, we go out again tonight.”

“And if I win?”

“Whatever you want.”

Still biting his lip, this time while staring at my lips, he said, “I get another kiss.”

“Just one?” I teased.

“We’ll start there.”

“You’re on.”

He took a page out of my book this time. After my cheating yesterday by getting a head start, he figured that he’d play the same wicked game. If I wasn’t sure before that he knew yesterday that I had purposefully let him win, I was definitely sure now because he knew that if I really wanted that second date bad enough, I would give him a run for his money. Now, while he probably wanted to take me on a second date, too, he wanted that kiss first. He could still ask me out again after our kiss. That was if he would win. The second he started dashing down the path, I caught on and started racing on my toes, just trying to keep up with him for the time being. Eventually, he would get tired. At one point or another, sprinting as fast as he was would just wear him out; and when that would happen, I would take the lead. So, I played the waiting game. I was following just on his heels, using his body as protection against all of the other people on the path. Then, just as I expected, when we started arriving at the roses, getting close to the top of the U-turn where one of us would claim victory, Aaron started to slow down. I smirked and started running faster.

“No—” he let out, trying to move faster. We were both laughing. “Fuck,” he cursed under his breath. A sudden image washed over me of him hovering above me, his hands braced on either side of my head, his lips next to my ear as he groaned that very curse word when driving into me. Before I knew it, I was slowing down. The thought of him pinning my hands and nibbling at my neck had me a little distracted. “Oh, so close,” he teased as he tapped the bench at the top of the U-turn. He noticed my mental distance. “What is it?”

I shook off the fantasy. “I just can’t believe I lost. I thought I had it.”

“You were way behind me!”

“Yeah, but slow and steady wins the race.”

“Not this time.”

I rolled my eyes. “You were distracting.”

“You know what else is distracting?” he asked while stepping towards me. I raised a curious brow, even though I knew exactly where this was going. He reached out to cup my face between his palms. As I tilted my head up, he leaned down and made the first move to kiss me. I didn’t hesitate to kiss him back, though. Both of us were still panting and somewhat sweaty, but a deal was a deal. He parted slightly from me because we were already short of breath. “By the way, it’s probably a good thing I won because my team’s eyeing a case in Oklahoma. There’s a chance I might be called there today, so I might not be here tomorrow.”

I pouted. We knew that this was a possibility, of course. When I first started learning about his job, he told me that he traveled a lot and without warning, which meant that our daily runs were never a guarantee; but now that things were progressing into something a little more than daily runs, I was finding that I was disappointed by this news. I didn’t want him to leave me. That was probably a selfish thing to think about someone who had only taken me on one date, but still… I really didn’t want him to leave. Especially when things were getting good for me— for us— and I wanted to spend more time with him. My pouting was plain to him. It didn’t take a profiler to know what I was thinking.

“I’m sorry,” he apologized genuinely.

I shook my head. “You can’t keep breaking your own apology rule. And, I know you can’t control which cases you guys take on. It’s okay.”

His thumb caressed my cheek. “How about, if it looks like I’ll still be here tonight, I take you out for dinner again.”

“But I lost the race.”

“I know. Still.”

“And if you’re not here?”

“I’ll make it up to you later.”

My mind wandered again to thoughts of his thumb that was on my cheek moving its way down to my clit, then slowly rubbing figure eights on the sensitive nub until I was falling apart. I could wait around for that. So, I gave in. After nodding an agreement, I pulled him in for another kiss. I could get so used to this with him.

* * *

When I arrived at work, I tried diving straight into everything I had to do in order to distract myself from the fantasies I was having of Aaron. All it took was one night… one date for me to change my mind about taking things slow with him. Now, I couldn’t stop thinking about him. I wanted to run my fingers down his abs or claw into his back as he fucked me so hard I would scream his name. That was only one of many ideas racing through my head. Every time I thought I could just focus on my work, something about him popped into my mind. It didn’t help that he had kissed me roughly while panting earlier. He could have been panting over me as he snapped his hips back and forth. He could have been panting while I took his entire length in my mouth. Fuck— My phone on my desk buzzed with a notification. I sighed as I lost my train of thought with my work, sitting upright so that I could turn my phone over and look at what was so important that I had to be disturbed. As my phone lit up, I smiled.

_From Aaron Hotchner:_ Hey. Wanna grab lunch with me today?

I hesitated for a moment as I stared at the screen of my phone, the text seemingly staring back at me. After our run this morning, I thought that we wouldn’t be seeing each other for awhile. It was possible that he really was going to be sent on a case soon, so in order to see me one last time, he was rushing to have lunch with me. We had only just gone on our first date last night, though. Granted, we made out on the sidewalk for anyone to see, so we weren’t exactly taking things slow in the conventional way. However, I didn’t see this coming. Not that I was opposed to it, though, of course. I liked the idea of spending every second I could with him. If he wasn’t busy with work or a case, I was more than happy to have lunch with him. So, I responded.

_To Aaron Hotchner:_ I’d love to.

_From Aaron Hotchner:_ I’m finishing up some work here. There’s a nice Italian restaurant around the corner. If you meet me here, I could walk you over.

_To Aaron Hotchner:_ Meet you where?

And then he sent me an address. Curious, I clicked it and waited for the Maps app on my phone to open. My jaw dropped suddenly when I realized where it was that he wanted me to meet him. Quantico. Like, as in… the FBI’s Quantico… I wasn’t too sure about that.

_To Aaron Hotchner:_ How do I even get in there?

_From Aaron Hotchner:_ Follow the map :)

So, he was a jokester when he wanted to be. Well, ha. ha. Seriously, though, how was I supposed to just waltz into the fucking FBI’s headquarters? Wasn’t that, like… Not allowed? America was weird. I couldn’t imagine just popping in at Interpol or Scotland Yard just to meet up with a guy who would immediately have me turn around so that we could go somewhere else for lunch. Couldn’t I just meet him at the restaurant? It felt weird to show up at his work randomly. What his friends think of me? I knew that he was the boss of his unit, so, technically, I wouldn’t be meeting his friends, I would be meeting his co-workers/employees. That wasn’t as weird. I was probably just thinking about this too hard, as usual. When it came to Aaron Hotchner, he made me double guess myself all the time— not in a bad way. He just… I didn’t want to fuck up with him. Knowing myself, I knew that if I didn’t put great consideration into every little detail when it came to him, I would fuck up and lose him entirely.

_To Aaron Hotchner:_ Funny. How do I get in?

_From Aaron Hotchner:_ Security will have your name.

Was I really going to do this? Yeah. I was. So, I texted Aaron back to tell him that I’d be there in about fifteen minutes. As for having to actually find the building and the office, that was going to take a little longer, but he didn’t need to know that. By giving him the fifteen minute heads up, it gave me some extra time to wander aimlessly while trying to find my way around his office.

The BAU— The Behavioral Analysis Unit. Supervisory Special Agent Aaron Christopher Hotchner was the Unit Chief for the BAU. When I had arrived at Quantico, I pulled up to a security checkpoint outside of the parking lot. When I gave them my name, they handed me a visitor’s parking pass, told me where to go, then opened up the gate. Inside, there was more security that I had to go through, this time emptying out all of my pockets before walking through an X-ray machine, then being pat down by a female security guard. It was a lot. They asked me why I was there while they were looking at my I.D. just to confirm who I was and why I was really there. If my answers didn’t match up with what Aaron had told them… Well, I wasn’t exactly sure what would happen to me. When I told them that I was there to see Aaron Hotchner, they told me that I was headed to see Supervisory Special Agent Aaron Hotchner, Unit Chief for the BAU, on the sixth floor of the building, using the third elevator on the right.

When I reached the sixth floor, the elevator doors opening in front of me, I saw just how busy it was. Agents were hurrying around everywhere. Some were carrying case files, others were carrying stacks and stacks of papers, and others were carrying nothing but a cup of coffee. Still, it looked like they had a purpose. No one seemed as clueless as I was, which meant that I stuck out like a sore thumb, and there was nothing I could do about it. The first brave step out of the elevator had to be taken on my own, unlike last night when Aaron held my hand through it. There were glass doors straight ahead with the BAU’s symbol and name on it. I figured my best bet was there. If that wasn’t the case, I was going to look really fucking stupid. Wonderful.

As I pushed through the glass doors, I saw a series of glass cubicles set up in the middle of the room, surrounded by a balcony that had two offices overlooking the cubicles, and on the opposite side of those offices was a boardroom and a breakroom. Everyone sitting at their desks in the cubicles turned to look at me. I was a stranger that had just come into their office in one of the most protected buildings in the country; yet, no one knew who I was. An unfamiliar face meant danger. The way I had been hesitant towards Aaron initially because of stranger danger was now being thrown back in my face by the group of agents staring at me, trying to deduce who I was and why I was there.

I approached a petite, blonde woman who was standing around. “Excuse me. I’m looking for Aaron—”

That was when I heard one of the doors of the left office on the balcony open up urgently. I glanced over to see him poking his head out and smiling at me. “Hey,” Aaron welcomed me from the doorway, “I’ll be down in a minute.”

I nodded and politely waved to let him know that it wasn’t a big deal. I could wait. Now that everyone around me knew that they had a little time to interrogate me before their boss would show up to protect me, everyone jumped to their feet and moved to surround me. I smiled at them.

The boy with long, curly hair was the first one to actually ask me a question. It started simple with, “What’s your name?” To which, I answered.

The older man with a goatee asked, “How long have you known Hotch?” I cocked a brow because I didn’t understand. “Aaron,” he clarified.

“Oh,” I giggled nervously. “Just a few weeks.”

“How do you know each other?” the blonde woman asked.

I turned to her. “We jog together every morning.”

“Just jogging?” the older man asked. The blonde hit his arm to warn him against asking impolite things like that. I laughed at him. “I only meant—”

“Everyone knows what you meant, Rossi,” the bald man over my right shoulder teased through a laugh.

“Y/N?” I heard her voice behind me.

I cocked a brow at the wall across from me, trying to decide if it was really her that I heard or if it was someone else. There was no way it was her. I must have been seeing things again, even though I thought all of that was behind me since meeting Aaron. But I could have sworn… The way my name was said was the same way she used to say it. Angelic, light, full of love and life. I loved it when she said my name because it was almost like it belonged to her— like she was the only one in the whole, wide world who was allowed to say it like that. I would recognize her voice anywhere. I would recognize the way she said my name anywhere. Then again, there were times where I swore it was her, like I swore Aaron’s friend Emily was her. Maybe if I just turned around—

As I spun on my heels to greet who had said my name, I stumbled. I was nearly knocked off my feet when I saw her. If it weren’t for the fact that all of Aaron’s friends were watching me, I was pretty sure I would have toppled over then and there; passing out entirely because one glimpse at her sent me back thirteen years. “Lauren?”


	7. a ghost from my past

“Lauren?” I inquired, squinting just to make sure I wasn’t seeing things.

There were her famous bangs, barely brushing against her eyelashes, so every time she blinked, her hair moved. I used to find that attractive. I wasn’t sure why, but I really liked seeing her bangs sway back in the day. When she would be hovering over me, her fingers buried inside of me as she would grind her clit against my thigh, she used to scrunch up her face in concentration, making her bangs fall right in her face in the most… beautiful way. Now that she was standing across from me, that was all I could picture. I spent thirteen years dreaming about that. Thirteen years of not knowing where she went, so all I had were the memories of what it was like to be with her and to stare at her. Her bangs were there, but her curls and highlighted brown hair were gone— replaced by short, straight black hair. I swore I saw her that day on my run. The day I met Aaron, I thought I had seen Lauren, so I stopped. At the time, when it didn’t turn out to be her, I thought I was going crazy. But, now that things were going really well with Aaron, I was starting to figure that it was the universe’s way of having fate make me literally run into Aaron. However… with Lauren standing across from me… I knew that I wasn’t crazy. She said my name. It was really her. It wasn’t some lost sister or doppelganger as I had speculated. It was really Lauren Reynolds.

“What are you doing here?” she asked me.

I looked up at Aaron’s office to see him coming down the ramp on the balcony in order to join the crowd that had gathered within the maze of cubicles we were standing in. “I…” I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t even know what to do when Aaron reached out to take my hand.

He looked between me and Lauren. “Do you two know each other?”

“I…” I was still speechless.

After thirteen years, one would think that I would have been racing into her arms, jumping at the first chance to hold her and kiss her again. Yet, I was frozen in place. Things were complicated now. There was this parting tug in my chest, one half of my heart pulling me towards Lauren, another part pulling me to Aaron. How was I supposed to answer a question like his when we clearly knew two very different people. I knew Lauren. He knew Emily. How was I going to explain all of this to him? How was she going to explain this to everyone standing around us? My head started to spin.

I squeezed Aaron’s hand. “You ready?”

He cocked a brow at me, unsure of why I had dodged his question the way I had. Still, he nodded and said, “Yeah.”

As we started walking out of the BAU’s office together, we passed Lauren. Both of us were staring at her, and she was staring right back at me, and I felt my heart skip a beat and tug towards her again. This was fucking ridiculous. Things were finally getting good for me again. I was finally moving on. I had stopped seeing flashes of her in my dreams, memories, and in strangers’ faces because I was so busy with Aaron and putting my attention and energy into him and building a relationship with him. And, as usual, Lauren Reynolds came in like an uncontrollable storm. She came and went as she pleased, always ignoring the chaos and devastation she left in her wake. Why did her timing have to be so shit? She spotted me that day on the trail— we exchanged a glance long enough for me to really think that it was her, only to have Aaron make me doubt myself by telling me that her name was Emily and they were close friends. And by close friends, I mean they were co-workers that had broken workplace rules multiple times. I was so pissed. I always imagined seeing her again, but not like this. I imagined that it would be in a field of roses like the one she kissed me in when we were in Romania. I imagined jumping into her arms and immediately kissing her until I couldn’t breathe. I imagined the two of us falling onto the ground and letting passion and desperation take over the situation.

“Aaron,” I stopped him once we made it out of the building. He looked at me with worry as he turned to face me. “I know her.”

Was I really doing this? The better question was, how the fuck did this become my reality? This shit only happened in movies. I didn’t want to be the cliche where my dirty secret came back to bite me in the ass, ruining the life I had built for myself, and destroying the one good thing I found since moving to D.C. I didn’t want Aaron to think that just because I found Lauren again that it somehow meant I cared for him any less. That wasn’t the case. While there was of course half of me that was aching because it was trying to pull me back inside to see her again, the other part of me was begging me to stay with him, holding his hand, staring into his eyes, thinking about how good he had been for me since we met. That being said, I valued honesty. I thought I could trust Lauren to tell me the truth about herself while we were dating, but since my life had just been turned upside down, I was slowly realizing that she hadn’t been honest with me. That irked me. It pissed me off. While I certainly wasn’t going to let this go, I had to tell Aaron the truth. He knew about Lauren as an idea, and he knew just how much she meant to me. If I valued everyone else’s honesty— especially hers and his, then they deserved mine. Though I told Lauren everything about me, she hardly told me anything about herself. At the time, I thought it was just because she was shy and didn’t know how to tell me certain things. But now… I would have to face that later. For now, I needed to tell Aaron the truth.

We hadn’t even made it off the sidewalk yet. When I would tell him, and if he would decide that he never wanted to see me again, I would understand. But, if I waited until we got to the restaurant and sat down, he could potentially feel trapped. I didn’t want that to be the case. As much as it pained me, I was okay with letting him tuck tail and run now because of this. I couldn’t convince him to stay with me now that things were complicated with me knowing and loving with Lauren and me knowing and liking him— Not to mention that he told me that they had slept together in the past, too. If I was mindfucked about all of this, there was no way in hell he wasn’t going to be just as confused.

“What are you talking about?” Aaron asked me when my silence wasn’t followed by an explanation.

“Emily— That girl up there… I know her.”

“How?”

“That’s Lauren.”

He cocked a brow. “I don’t understand.”

“She recognized me, Aaron. She said my name. I looked at her, and I saw that it was really her. That’s Lauren Reynolds.”

“No. Her name’s Emily—”

“I don’t understand it either. I just know what I saw and heard.”

A ghost from my past had returned at the worst time imaginable. My worst fear of having Aaron not understand and work this out with me was slowly coming true. His hand that had been clasped around mine, released and fell to his side before he took a step back and looked away from me. I was losing him. I only just got him, and I was immediately losing him because of circumstances that I couldn’t control. I hated this. I hated Lauren…. No… No, I didn’t. But, I wanted to. I wished that I did. I couldn’t hate her, the same way I couldn’t hate Aaron for distancing himself from me now.

“Can you look at me for a moment?” I knew that I had no right to ask that of him, but I had to try. If I was going to lose him just as quickly as I gained him, then I wanted one last glance as I tried to explain. Aaron looked up slightly through his dark lashes. “I really like you.” This was fucking pathetic. “I like getting to know you, and I like hanging out with you. And, after last night, I really like the idea of going out with you.” He looked down again, making my heart drop to my stomach. “I know you think that this can’t be explained or fixed. And maybe it can’t. But I want to try. I want to know why and how this happened, and I want to figure out a way to make this work, because I want to keep hanging and going out with you. I just need you to give me an opportunity to talk to her so that I can put the pieces together. From there, I think there’s a real chance we can move on.”

Aaron pressed a palm to forehead like he was trying to stop his mind and thoughts from spinning and spiraling. “Are you sure it was really her?”

“Yeah.”

“How is that possible?”

“I’m hoping to ask her.”

“She never told me. It was nowhere in her file—”

“Aaron, I’m not seeing things this time. I’m not seeing what I want to see in order to prove a point to myself. Since meeting you, I haven’t seen flashes of her like I did when I was alone. It _is_ her.”

He stared at me again. Moments seem to pass where we just stared at each other, both of us thinking up ways that we could proceed. On one hand, I wanted to go to lunch with him and forget that any of this ever happened; but, on the other hand, I needed to go back up there and talk to Lauren. I needed answers. In fact, I think all three of us needed answers. I needed to know why the hell she was working for the FBI and everyone seemed to think that her name was Emily. Aaron needed to know why I thought that his friend— someone he knew for years and leaned on after his wife’s death was suspected of having an entire, secret life that he didn’t know about. And, if anything, Lauren needed to know how I happened upon her at the BAU of all places in the world.

“Okay,” he gave in with a nod. “Talk to her.” He sounded like he didn’t seem too convinced about an optimistic outcome, though.


	8. we need to talk

When Aaron and I arrived back on the sixth floor, the team was already back at their desks, trying to focus on work. From just outside the glass doors, I could see Lauren staring out the windows of the building, lost in thought as he bit on the back of her pen nervously. At least she wasn’t biting her nails anymore. That was an old habit that she just couldn’t seem to break, no matter what we did, and no matter how many times I told her that it wasn’t good for her. Even before entering, though, I turned to look at Aaron again. He was staring back at me. I wanted to apologize, but our rules prevented it. I wanted to tell him it was alright, but I didn’t know if that were true. And I wanted to tell him that no matter what would happen, I really liked being with him; I just didn’t think I was in any position to say that to him.

Aaron opened one of the doors and ushered me inside. I smiled politely at him as I headed in, my gaze immediately returning to Lauren once Aaron was out of my sight, and he decided to return to his office up on the balcony. Lauren, still biting on the back of her pen, looked over at him. When she realized that he was back and not at lunch with me, she spun around in her chair. Our eyes met. For a moment, I could feel myself slipping into a trance, falling in love with her involuntarily all over again, getting lost in her dark eyes, dreaming about her plump lips kissing every inch of my body. I gestured to the boardroom. Both of us watched the team as we took separate paths to the boardroom, ensuring that no one was looking over at us or going to make an attempt to stop us or talk to us. We had a mission. My goal was to get into that room, sit down with Lauren, and sort all of this out before it could hurt the relationship I was building with Aaron.

“We need to talk,” I said the second I saw her closing the door behind her at the same time I closed the other door.

Lauren agreed, ”I know.”

I sat down at the roundtable sitting in the middle of the room. “Why do they call you Emily?”

She looked out the window of the boardroom to see that her entire team was watching us, trying to profile every bit of our conversation and our relationship. How did we know each other? Why were we talking privately? Why did things seem so tense and hostile between us? They wanted answers, and they, unfortunately, had the tools to confirm their suspicions. So, Lauren stood and went to close the blinds. “Because that’s my name,” she answered. The room got dark, so she flicked the light switch on. When she turned in my direction again, she could see the confusion written across my face. She sighed, “Fine.” She dug into her pocket to pull out her FBI credentials, like the ones Aaron showed me when I thought he was some creep just following me around. “My name’s Emily, Y/N.” She handed her badge to me so that I could see the proof for myself. As I held the wallet in my hands, I felt my heart sink when I read that it was true. There was no way she could dupe the FBI with a fake name. Those credentials were accurate, which meant that I didn’t know her at all.

Emily Prentiss.

Not Lauren Reynolds. Not Lauren. Not the love of my life. Just… Emily Prentiss.

“So, your name wasn’t real.”

She sat down in the chair next to me after spinning it so that we were facing each other. “Yes.”

“Was any of it real?”

“Y/N—” she tried to pinch my chin between her thumb and index finger like she always did when she wanted my attention, but now all I could do was think about how Aaron did it every time he wanted to kiss me. So, I pulled away from her touch. “Y/N…” she tried cooing quietly, sitting back in her seat so that I knew she wouldn’t try to touch me again. “Of course it was real. You were the only real thing about Lauren— about me.”

When I still didn’t look at her, I could sense her body tensing up as she held in a sigh, and she considered what to say next. This was hard. It was ridiculous to be sitting there across from her after all this time and under shitty circumstances. I hated that I had to be cold towards her. I also hated how this would potentially end— with me perhaps losing both Aaron and Lauren in the process. If that were the case, I at least wanted to know the truth. The whole fucking truth. Asking Lauren to tell me everything was hard, but I persevered, ignoring the way her eyes widened in response when she realized that she had no choice but to give into my request.

There was a man named Ian Doyle. Dozens of agencies around the world had been trying to take him down, to no avail because no one could get close enough to him to prove that he was connected to a handful of terrorist attacks, as well as weapons and drug smuggling. He knew how to keep it under wraps. Because of his money, his gang, the mercenaries he paid to protect him, he was able to make his circumstances seem like he had happened across a large sum of money out of luck, and that was it. No one could pin him for anything. So, Lauren and her team were called in to find evidence. In order to do so, however, they needed to try what everyone else was too chicken shit to do because of one reason or another, and that was to send someone undercover. Everyone knew it wasn’t going to be a short operation. Doyle didn’t trust many people, understandably. In order for them to learn about his connections to the attacks and his smuggling jobs on the side, they had to spend years trying to infiltrate his ranks, using the one thing they knew would open him up the most: love. They sent Lauren in because they knew that she was his type. Her cover was that she was an arms dealer— the best there was. Her story was that she didn’t meet face to face with clients in order to protect herself and to hide the fact that she was a woman because the arms dealing business was a male run industry, so it was best to keep her identity under wraps. However, when she reached out to Doyle to make a deal with him, he demanded to meet her in person. When they did, he was shocked to discover that she was a woman, and that she was gorgeous and everything he loved about a woman. Tall, slim, brunette, curly hair, sparkling eyes, plump lips, wrists and neck that were slender enough to wrap his palms around, and a heart of gold.

That was how I knew Lauren, too. That was how I fell in love with her, too. So, when she told me that Doyle ended up falling in love with her, as planned, I wasn’t surprised, but I did find that I was extremely jealous. All that time, I had been sharing her… I thought I was hers— and more importantly, that she was mine… I never thought in a million years that she was racing off to go sleep with a man just for a job. I thought she loved and respected me more than that. I almost wanted to slap her. But I restrained myself so that she could continue telling me everything.

By the time Doyle asked her to run away with him, they had enough evidence to put him away in prison for three lifetimes. The only reason she hadn’t turned it in yet was because she knew that when she did, her team would be done in Europe, and her identity as Lauren Reynolds would be washed away, which meant that she would have to leave me. So, she tried withholding it. She didn’t tell her team the truth about Ian Doyle for another three months. But then he asked her to run away. He looked her in the eye, got down on one knee, proposed to her, and when she said yes in order to maintain her cover, he started making plans to have them disappear. She felt stuck. If she went with Doyle, she would never see me again. If she turned him in, she would never see me again. Either way, she was going to lose me. So, she made a choice. She decided that turning him in meant that she still had her freedom to come back to me whenever she wanted, whereas she would have been a prisoner with Doyle.

“I didn’t have any choice.”

I scoffed. “You abandoned me…”

“I didn’t abandon you, baby—”

“Don’t call me that,” I pleaded quietly. My throat was tightening around a sob that I just couldn’t let escape because of her.

“I didn’t abandon you,” she repeated after learning her lesson. “Every time I was in Europe, I found you, and I thought about going back to you… but I just… I couldn’t… You were moving on, so I decided to stay away—”

“You were watching me all that time?!” I inquired, my voice raising to a shout. Lauren didn’t say anything. “You saw that I was suffering without you— You saw that I thought I was going crazy every time I thought I saw you; and you- you— How could you do that to me, Lauren—” And then I stopped. Her name, her past, her life, her job, her secrets were all lies. She wasn’t Lauren. Though I knew her as Lauren, and it was a habit that wouldn’t easily be broken, she wasn’t my Lauren. She wasn’t the woman I knew. “I fell in love with a lie.”

“No.”

“Yes. You told me your name was Lauren Reynolds, not Emily Prentiss. You told me that you weren’t American, even though you are. You told me that your job was normal and safe, even though you were a fucking spy. You told me you loved me. How am I supposed to believe that now when everything else was falsified in order to protect an investigation I had nothing to do with? Why couldn’t you just tell me the truth about yourself? Why couldn’t you tell me that you were always running off to be one of the good guys?”

“I didn’t know when I first met you that things would turn out the way they did. I thought that Ian sent someone to watch me, so when you came up to me…” She sighed and hid her face in her hands. “I had to maintain my cover, Y/N. By the time I knew for sure that you weren’t involved with Ian, it was too late. You already knew me as Lauren, and you had fallen in love with me as Lauren, and I fell in love with you as Lauren. I didn’t know what to do. So, I just kept going with it. I figured, that way, if Ian ever found you, you wouldn’t know the truth about me, so it would protect you. That was all I ever wanted to do, Y/N. I wanted to protect you. That’s what you do when you love someone the way I loved you.”

“You could have told me the truth.”

“I couldn’t,” she insisted.

“Aaron and I make it work because he told me the truth.”

“Yeah, well, I didn’t have the pleasure of knowing that every time I left, you would be safe. Every time I got called back to Italy by my team or Doyle, I was terrified that my job would end with me losing you. I thought that he would find out the truth about you, and have you killed, which was why I had to keep you moving. And if my team ever found out where I was really going when I told them I was running undercover operations for Ian, they would have hid you away from me. So, no, I couldn’t tell you the truth. My lies kept you safe.”

I stared at her. Finally, the one question that had been racing through my mind since I first laid eyes on her, came to light. “What do we do now?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know.”

“I really like Aaron, Lauren. I haven’t liked anyone this way since you.”

“I know.”

“You know?”

“I haven’t seen him like that before… At least not since Haley died. And I haven’t seen you like that since I left. It was obvious how the two of you felt.”

I sucked in a shaky breath, pushing myself to my feet to do something that would occupy my mind. I pinched two of the blinds together so that I could peek out. Aaron was standing in his office window, watching the boardroom intently for any signs of movement. When he saw my eyes, he relaxed somewhat. As for the rest of his team, they were still at their cubicles, only this time, they were huddled together, likely discussing me and Lauren. This was a mess. Not only would Lauren and I eventually have to come to some kind of conclusion, but now we would have to sit down with Aaron— or at least I would— and then she would have to tell them the truth about us. They didn’t strike me as the type of people that let secrets go. Now that they knew something was up, they were going to pry until Lauren would give them answers. If everyone outside of that room just as badly as the two of us inside of the room did, we were going to have to decide something soon, no matter if it were good or bad.

“I never stopped loving you, by the way,” Lauren admitted shyly from her seat. I released the blinds. “At first, I thought I wasn’t going to survive being away from you. It killed me every time I had to go back to Italy, but leaving so abruptly on that Wednesday afternoon and not being able to talk to you one last time was the one thing that nearly made me quit everything just for you.”

“So, why didn’t you?”

“Like I said,every time I went to Europe and I saw you, I could see that you were struggling to move on, but you were doing it. If I just waltzed back into your life, it would have ruined your life. I knew that.”

“My life was ruined when you didn’t come back.”

“That’s not true. Look at how well you and Hotch are doing.”

“You got to him first, apparently.”

She cleared her throat uncomfortably. As I spun around on my heels, I could see that she was blushing. “How do you know about that?”

“He told me.”

“It only happened—”

“Three times. I know that, too.”

“His wife had—”

“Died, and he needed comfort. I know.” I was being more cold now than I had been before. I could tell that it stung both of us to hear me talking to her that way, but I just… I couldn’t listen to it. She was trying to explain herself, even though I already knew the answers, and it honestly hurt to hear about the two of them.

Lauren stood, as well. “What are we going to do?”

Oh, so now she was asking me? Was she suddenly hoping that I had an answer to that impossible question? How was I supposed to know? How was I supposed to look at her and tell her that I still loved her, too, but I also liked Aaron more than I could admit aloud. There had to be a simple answer. Something out there could tell us how to make this all work, but I just wasn’t sure what that something was. It was like it was on the tip of my tongue, like it was something I had resting in the back of my mind but I just didn’t know how to tell her. I had to settle on something the way she had to settle for turning in Doyle just for a chance to see me from afar. I made the difficult choice.

“I can’t keep loving a lie. I can’t sit around and wait for a woman who doesn’t really exist to come running back into my arms. Maybe… Just maybe… things between me and Aaron might not work out, and if that’s the case, I hope that I know the real you by that point enough to be your friend. But for the meantime, I need to face the truth. I don’t know you. You’re practically a stranger to me, Lauren—” I chuckled to myself. “Emily.” I shook my head. “I know Aaron. I know who he really is, and he knows who I really am. I need to stick to that.”

Lauren nodded as she looked down at the floor. My gaze fell, too. I always wanted some kind of goodbye, and I supposed that was it. Only, now, I wished I never got it at all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oops. sorry. i promise, they'll all get together................. eventually *evil laughter*  
> (btw, i've never written slow burn before lol, so we'll see how it goes)


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